


Tuckered Out

by apacketofseeds



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Fainting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-14 02:02:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16030685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apacketofseeds/pseuds/apacketofseeds
Summary: A governmental cock-up takes up a lot of Malcolm’s time—time he should’ve spent eating breakfast, getting some shut-eye, or looking after himself. There’s only so much stress his body can take, and Nicola’s the only one who notices.





	Tuckered Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ruuger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruuger/gifts).



> I couldn't resist your request for The Thick of It + a love of men fainting! 
> 
> I really hope you like this fic. I had such fun writing it.

“This is a total fucking embarrassment.”  
  
“And a good morning to you too, Malcolm,” Nicola said, phone pinned between her ear and shoulder in the back of the cab while thumbing through the papers.  
  
She’d expected an earful after missing the PM’s talk last night.  _The Telegraph_  had named and shamed her this morning—along with 99% of her fellow ministers—for lack of attendance and, therefore, lack of support for her party leader.  _The Sun_  claimed proudly that the PM couldn’t organise a punch-up on a council estate, complete with cropped photos of boxing gloves and a nondescript tower block for the larger part of their readership who couldn’t parse basic English.  
  
“Why weren’t you there?” Malcolm asked, words dripping venom down the line like poison poured in her ear.   
  
“As I told you last night—”   
  
“I don’t care about the diary fuck up, this needs putting right. Today, eleven A.M., conference room twelve, sixth floor. Every. single. minister will be there.” That would’ve taken an awful lot of herding and shouting. He’d probably pulled an all-nighter. “Press will be too, so try and look like a normal person, yeah?”  
  
“I don’t know if—”   
  
“No bullshit. If you’re not there, I’ll have you hung, drawn and quartered, your quarters quartered, then quartered again, you hear me?”   
  
Inhaling all the words she wanted to say—including correcting his misuse of ‘hung’—and breathing them back out in the form of a small sigh, she asked instead, “How many pieces is that?”   
  
“A lot. So be there. Now I must be going; I’ve actual important people to call.”   
  
“Who could possibly be more important than me, Malcolm?” The cabbie’s eyes flicked up to look at her in the rear-view.   
  
“Oh, I don’t know. An X-Factor runner-up? Mr Blobby’s fucking chiropodist?”  
  
When he hung up, she turned back to  _The Independent_  to see what they had to say about the fiasco.   
  
~  
  
The ministerial droids had gathered, as ordered, for the PM’s second attempt at rallying his party to announce new directions. It was going well—people had turned up this time at least. Almost everyone had, actually. It was a better turnout than most PMQs. Well done, Malcolm.   
  
Nicola was supposed to be listening, nodding at all the right moments and smiling at what she supposed could be loosely-termed ‘jokes’, but she couldn’t concentrate. Not because Tom’s voice was duller than Gyles Brandreth’s dishwater. Not because the photographer standing beside her at the end of the aisle of chairs was elbowing her in the shoulder every time he snapped a picture. And not because the room was utterly stifling from the sheer amount of bodies crammed into it. It was Malcolm, standing off to the side down the front, the devil on Tom’s left shoulder: he looked like he was about to drop dead.  
  
He’d always been pale—office work does that—but now he looked downright sickly. His mouth hung open, head dropping forwards and jerking back up like he was having trouble stopping it falling off. Two symmetrical patches of sweat were just visible under his arms and he was swaying on his feet.  
  
She should leave him.   
  
She really should…  
  
Tom was droning about something to do with social networking. She tried to tune back in at the end of his sentence but had trouble following.  
  
Look. If Malcolm was running himself into the ground, that was his problem. She refused to mother him when she barely had time for her own kids.   
  
Everyone laughed suddenly. Nicola smiled along, pretended she was listening.   
  
It was becoming impossible to look away from Malcolm. It seemed like she was the only person in the room noticing how entirely  _not-right_  he looked. He was almost hyperventilating, his hands gripped so tightly together in front of him his knuckles were white. Maybe he was finally going to have a heart attack. (Ollie had a bet going with Glenn about that.)   
  
If the tables were turned, would he let her fall like a stack of bricks? Probably.   
  
Despite the internal argument with herself, an instinctive part of Nicola took over; she found herself standing before deciding if she should. Malcolm would probably tell her to sit the fuck back down, and she was only drawing attention to herself, but she had to at least ask if he was all right. She crept from her seat, keeping her head bowed as she picked her way through the crowd, apologising under her breath as people shuffled to let her through.   
  
As she approached Malcolm, his hand shot out and grabbed her arm. “Get me out of here,” he whispered, voice strained. It was more a plea than an order, like a drowning man begging for a lifeline.  
  
“Where?”   
  
“I don’t care.” She knew he didn’t mean that. He’d want to be out of sight, out of mind. Away from cameras and the people who knew him only as a tempestuous, unshakable tyrant.   
  
She dragged him through the door, down the corridor and around a corner. There was no one around and the air was cooler here.  
  
“Want me to call someone?”   
  
“No. I need to…” He trailed off, eyes glazing over as his back hit the wall. “Just sit…”   
  
Was it head-between-the-knees for this sort of thing? No idea. She didn’t want to risk running off to find him a chair either. It appeared to be too late for that, anyway; Malcolm slid down the wall until he sat with his legs out in front of him, even more colour draining from his face, his skin almost translucent.   
  
“When did you last eat?” Squatting down beside him, she rummaged through her bag and handed him her water bottle, quickly realising he had no strength to grip it.   
  
Malcolm mumbled something that ended in the word ‘hot’, pawing at his shirt collar with a pathetically limp hand. She loosened his tie a little, but it didn’t stop him gasping for air, eyes rolling back in his head. Maybe she should call an exorcist.   
  
It was distressing seeing him this way: clammy, delirious, vulnerable. He’d hate it just as much if he was in his right mind. Malcolm was always so put together and self-controlled (besides the sometimes out-of-hand yelling.) Now he just looked… helpless. And very,  _very_  overheated.   
  
There was a toilet around the corner. Taking her chance, she sprinted into the ladies, unfurled a few lengths of toilet paper, ran it under the cold tap, and hurried back to where Malcolm sat slumped. His head tipped back as she pressed the ball of cold tissue to his forehead. Excess water ran down his temple and dripped off his chin onto his shirt. He seemed to find some relief from it.   
  
She’d never been much of a nurturer. Though, she was a wife and mother of four; she should be able to cope. This wasn’t James’ man-flu, though, or Ella vomiting before school—which turned out to be a hangover and not pregnancy, thank fuck—or even Glenn’s nosebleed at the party conference. This was—oh. Oh, right… This was Malcolm flat out losing consciousness.   
  
Not wanting him to collapse onto his side, she let him slump against her arm, surprised by how light he was.   
  
“Malcolm,” she said in a scolding half-whisper. Glancing over her shoulder, she noticed a few heads turning the corner and shooed them away. She didn’t want the press, or anyone, anywhere near this. “Come on, Malcolm. Snap out of it!”   
  
He was totally gone. Maybe she should call an ambulance. What was the recovery position again? Something with a leg at ninety degrees and… Christ, those first aid classes weren’t worth the money, were they?  
  
Tom continued droning on a few rooms away. A bubble of laughter flooded down the corridor alongside the sound of shutters clicking. Nicola tried not to think what the headlines would’ve been if Malcolm had fainted in there:   
  
\---DAVIS SO DULL, AID LOSES CONSCIOUSNESS   
  
\---TUCKERED OUT!  
  
\---THE RISE AND FALL OF MALCOLM TUCKER  
  
She continued smoothing the cool, wet tissue over Malcolm’s relaxed features. It was as warm as his skin now, so was more for comfort than anything else. Like this, he was so unguarded, a pleasant softness to his face that was usually set into a constant scowl. Perhaps this strange proximity was too much, though. She should probably step away and give him some air, because if he knew this was going on, he’d be furious. As Malcolm’s breathing began to level, Nicola stopped worrying. His face twitched. His mouth opened and closed a few times. He was coming round.   
  
“Malcolm, you’re all right,” Nicola whispered, stroking his sweat-damp hair back while he groaned. “You’re okay.”   
  
When his eyes blinked open, she almost saw his inner monologue play out on his face like a silent melodrama. He looked peaceful at first—perhaps he’d been dreaming—then, suddenly, it dawned on him that he was in public. He jolted backwards, almost recoiling from her as his hand snapped up to touch his face.   
  
“Welcome back,” Nicola said, with what she hoped was a reassuring smile.   
  
“How long have I been here?” Malcolm clambered to his feet, ignoring Nicola’s attempt to help him up. At least that was more like himself.  
  
“Three minutes, tops.” She passed him the bottle of water and he snatched it, swallowing down half of its contents without pausing for breath.  
  
He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, getting his breath back. “Anyone see?” When Nicola shook her head, he nodded and straightened his jacket. “Good. Let’s back in there.”   
  
~  
  
Malcolm’s attempt to mop up last night’s disaster went off without a hitch. When Tom finished his speech there was a long round of applause and lots of photo opportunities. Malcolm’s spin on the diary cock-up made it sound like a technical glitch rather than the incompetence of an intern who’d been too scared to admit their mistake. He’d done well.   
  
Nicola snuck out before a greasy press photographer could ask her for a soundbite, squeezing through the doors and longing for perhaps ten minutes of silence in her office (a near-impossible luxury) before her next appointment of the day.  
  
As she reached the stairwell, Malcolm appeared like a phantom from a nearby meeting room.  
  
“Nicola?” He had a coffee in his hand, a half-eaten protein bar pinched between two fingers. “Thanks for that. Back there.”   
  
Nicola smiled before turning to face him. She’d never expected a thank you. “Pleasure, Malcolm.” Eying the contents of his hand—his lunch, presumably—she raised her eyebrows.   
  
“Don’t start,” he said, calling the lift. He shoved the rest of the protein bar into his mouth before pushing the screwed-up wrapper into his pocket. She didn’t think she’d ever actually seen him eat anything before.   
  
“Please eat something real,” she said, realising too late that she was giving Malcolm Tucker the look she’d give the girls if all they’d eaten was cheesy chips or something equally horrific for dinner. She expected him to fight that look immediately and wouldn’t blame him.   
  
“Yeah. I feel like celebrating.” He stepped into the lift and hit the button for ground. “I’m gonna order a pizza.”   
  
As the doors closed, Nicola smirked. Good enough, she supposed. 


End file.
